


Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

by Anonymous



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Barista!Eggsy, M/M, Rated T for swearing, kind of, sort of, transient person!Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 01:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5272244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See, the thing is, Eggsy didn’t mean to become obsessed with the homeless bloke. Or at least, the bloke Eggsy was pretty sure was homeless. </p><p>There he was, anyway, holding a piece of blackberry pie and feeling like a limpet. </p><p>Or: The one where Eggsy is a big softy and Harry is undercover.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, mustardprecum, for being such an amazing sounding board within this fandom. I hope you enjoy this! I, um, don't know if you have an Ao3.
> 
> The title is from the same nursery rhyme Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy gets it's name from, and the scene Harry reads aloud from P&P is the one where Darcy does the "My good opinion, once lost, is lost forever" thing.

See, the thing is, Eggsy didn’t mean to become obsessed with the homeless bloke. Or at least, the bloke Eggsy was _pretty sure_ was homeless.

There he was, anyway, holding a piece of blackberry pie and feeling like a limpet.

The man—Harry, his name was—had sat at the same grubby Formica table every night for a fortnight. And though Eggsy knew loads about the other evening regulars at the dingy espresso bar, he found he knew fuck all about Harry aside from the fact that the man put inhuman amounts of sugar in his coffee. Seriously, Eggsy couldn’t fathom how the man had teeth left in his head. But he did...and they were rather nice teeth, too, judging by the polite _thank you_ smiles he got in return for pouring refills and bringing out more packets of sugar.

It wasn’t uncommon, in this part of town, to have transient folk come ‘round to get out of the cold. It definitely wasn’t uncommon for customers to be wearing clothes that were obviously from charity shops. Eggsy didn’t know what was so different about Harry, but...

Okay, that was a lie. He _did_ know what was different. With people on the estates—folk that had been poor all their lives, that is—there was a certain look of _belonging_ in their second-hand clothes, an ease that came only from wearing them enough to lose the self-conscious edge of embarrassment that you had as a kid.

It wasn’t ratty clothes that stood out where he was brought up, is the point he was trying to make, but new, smart ones. Harry did _not_ look like a man used to wearing denims that were wearing out in the knees or a jacket that was fraying at the bottom.

And for all he was lacking in presentable attire, he was clean and polite. Eggsy reckoned he’d heard _please_ and _thank you_ more out of Harry since he’d turned up than he had in a whole month of Sundays out of his other customers. Shame, that.

It made his heart turn, really. Eggsy didn’t believe that _anybody_ deserved to live rough, and wouldn’t wish the experience of not having enough to eat on his worst enemy, but he thought it must be much harder to cope if you’d _had_ the comfort before, if you were used to having everything you needed.

Eggsy admired the way Harry was dealing with it, too. Harry never regaled him with sob stories about how he used to _be somebody_ or tried to guilt him into sliding him a butty on the down low. And it ain’t that Eggsy isn’t sympathetic—he is, really—but there’s something about the way that Harry just spends his evenings quietly reading a tattered old paperback and drinking cup after cup of coffee that Eggsy admires.

That’s what the pie is about. Eggsy’s never seen Harry eat, and the bloke sits there for like...Eggsy’s entire shift, at least. The coffee is clever—appetite suppressant and all. It’s a method he’s used himself when money got tight, but he’d rather see the man eat _something_.

He’d debated on what to do for a couple of hours. A man who sat with his back so ramrod-straight was not a man who’d take kindly to pity, so the sandwiches were out. They’d be too obvious. And since this was just a tiny corner espresso bar and not a proper cafe, that took out most of the good options. He finally settled on the bloody pie, because at least it had fruit in, right?

Eggsy took a nervous breath and stepped up to the corner booth. “Hey, mate. Was jus’ wonderin’ if you like blackberry pie? Only, we’re gonna throw it out an’ it seems like a waste.”

Harry looked up from his book, brow furrowed. He glanced from Eggsy’s face to the pie and back again.

“It’s good, mind. The bosses jus’ have some weird policies about freshness.”

The man gave him a soft, shy smile. “Thank you. I must confess, I have a bit of a sweet tooth.”

Eggsy laughed as he set the plate down and gestured to the pile of ripped white sugar packets. “You don’t say?”

Harry smiled again, and it wasn’t like the smiles Eggsy had seen before—the shy one or the absent-minded _thank you_ one. No, this smile was wide and mischievous. It gave Harry these little wrinkles around his eyes and it made butterflies flutter in Eggsy’s stomach.

He went back to the counter before he could say something stupid.

* * *

 

They were going through a bad patch at home, though Eggsy would never admit it. Dean had lost their rent money— _Eggsy’s_ money—in a dogfight. What’s more, he’d lost the money he owed his dealer.

Eggsy had had enough in his savings to cover the rent, and talked to their landlord about going through him directly in future. He drew the line, though, at giving Dean more money to go get all lit up. He just wouldn’t do it—not for all the tea in China. So, his stepfather was recovering from a well-deserved beating and dealing with the shakes, and was just all-around making everyone miserable.

Dean must have been feeling better midway through Eggsy’s Thursday evening shift, though, because Eggsy’s mother came in looking harried. Daisy, his baby sister, came trailing after like a little duckling.

“She’s makin’ too much noise, babe. Dean says she’s doin’ ‘is head in,” Michelle pleaded.

“She’s fuckin’ four, Mum. Four year olds make noise. Tell Dean to shut his fuckin’ yap.”

“You know he’s poorly, Eggsy. He’s in a bad place now, an’ it’s all your fault,” she declared, as though he was the one who’d bet all their money on a goddamn Jack Russell terrier. “So you either gotta keep Dais out of his hair or give me the money to go pick up his—“ she glanced exasperatedly at Daisy, “—medicine.”

Eggsy runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “ _Mum_ , I’m bloody _working._ I’m the only one here. I can’t just fuck off to babysit—they’ll sack me for sure.”

Michelle said nothing, and won anyway. A few minutes later, Eggsy was setting his sister up at a table with a colouring book and a snack.

He tried to watch her, he really did, but there were customers and closing duties. He had to do his job, especially now that he had no savings to fall back on if he lost his job.

There was a moment, when he was lugging a tray of dishes up from the back—a horrible, lurching moment that he thought she was gone. His mind spun with the possibilities—she could have been snatched up by some kiddie fiddler, or wandered off to be squashed by a lorry.

And then, he saw her, sitting with Harry. She was curled up against him with her training cup and her Elsa dolly and he was...he was reading to her. From _Pride and bloody Prejudice._

As though sensing that he was being watched, Harry glanced up to Eggsy, nodded once, and resumed his reading.

“’And yours,’ he replied with a smile, ‘is wilfully to misunderstand them.’

"’Do let us have a little music," cried Miss Bingley, tired of a conversation in which she had no share…”

Eggsy was sure, in that moment, that Harry deserved more than a slice of pie.

* * *

 

He came in early the next day, with two kebabs from the shop ‘round the corner. He spun a lie for Harry’s pride—they gave him an extra by mistake and he deffo couldn’t eat both. It would be doing him a favour, he said, to take the other one off his hands.

Harry did, of course, with a smile and his ever-polite “Thank you, Eggsy.”

They chatted for a bit about nothing in particular—the weather, Daisy, Jane Austen—before Eggsy pushed through the nervous lump that’d taken root in the pit of his stomach.

“I been thinkin’ about getting a flat of my own,” he started.

“That’s nice.”

“Could do with a roommate or sommat, you know?”

Harry hummed and nodded. “Of course. It will help with the expenses. Have you thought of putting up an advert over at the Uni?”

He had to keep himself from groaning at how dim Harry was being, and decided that the direct approach may be best. “Look, Harry. I wanna help. Ain’t right, you livin’ rough like you are. I—I haven’t got a plan just yet, but if you keep comin’ back, I reckon I can figure it all out.”

The older man, bless him, looked as confused as the day is long. He opened his mouth to speak but the barely-audible jingle of the bell latched to the door caught his attention.

The customer who walked in—a sallow bloke Eggsy thought recognized as being one of Dean’s mucky-muck suppliers—took one look at Harry and booked it back out of the door.

Later, Eggsy still wouldn’t be able to explain what happened. He turned back to Harry, the “ _That was well weird_ ,” dying on his tongue when the man wasn’t in his seat. If it’d been a cartoon, he reckoned Harry would have been there one second and a puff of dust in the next, with only the jinglin’ doorbell as a clue to where he went.

And it was bizarre, really, because he wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he reached the door, but the sight of Harry—the sedate, coffee-fuelled geezer in scuffed workman’s boots, _that_ Harry—tearing down the street like Usain fuckin’ Bolt was not it.

No, Eggsy has no fuckin’ clue what was going on, but he reckoned Harry’s nights of drinking coffee in the corner booth were over. He had no fuckin’ clue why that made him so sad, either.

* * *

“Do you have a break coming soon, Eggsy?”

He was making a latte when the customer spoke—not the customer who’d ordered the latte, even, just some tosser in a suit, but he glanced up from steaming the milk long enough to mutter “Nah, mate, not for a bit.”

And did a double take, because standing in front of him, looking frankly fucking gorgeous in a navy pinstripe suit, was Harry. Eggsy stared. His brain struggled to function.

Harry was almost unrecognizable out of his threadbare denims, but there was no mistaking the soft, crinkling lines around his dark eyes.

“Pity,” he said. “I was hoping we would be able to have a chat.”

Eggsy, brain still struggling to chug along, opened his mouth to reply without knowing what he meant to say, and then it was decided for him by fate.

“Shit, shit, _shit!_ ” he yelled at the milk foam, which was overflowing all over the counter. He switched the machine off and frantically mopped at it before it spread too far.

“Language, Unwin!” his boss cut in angrily. “Go take a walk ‘til you can keep a civil tongue in yer head!”

Eggsy huffed and tossed the rag into the bucket of sanitized water, muttering “Guess its break time after all.”

He followed Harry outside, noticing despite himself how the cut of his trousers flattered his bum. Bit like gilding the lily, that, because Eggsy had thought Harry’s bum looked nice in his jeans, too.

Shaking off that _completely sodding useless_ line of thought, he walked through the door Harry had held open for him and crossed his arms over his chest. The situation was _well_ surreal, the homeless bloke suddenly cropping up after a week, dressed like he was. Eggsy didn’t know nothing about suits, but he was willing to bet a week’s wages that the one in front of him just then cost more than six months’ rent.

Harry didn’t seem bothered by his posturing, and said “I apologize for calling at work, but I wasn’t sure where else to find you.”

“Well, you found me, and I gotta say, I ain’t got a clue about why you’re here. You a copper or summat?”

It was the only thing that made any sense, really. Not that it fit entirely, because the word on the estates was that Eddie Barrows—the bloke Harry had tore off after—was fished out of the Thames three days ago with a bullet hole in his skull. Plus, he was pretty sure that undercover police didn’t _that_ much.

“Or something.”

Smug bastard. Eggsy found himself surprisingly eager to end the conversation. He didn’t much like feeling like he didn’t know what was going on around him. “Listen, I don’t know what that was all about the other night, but I ain’t gonna say nothin’ to nobody. I never grassed anyone up and I ain’t starting now. So, no worries.”

Harry smiled, all toothy and charming. “I appreciate that, Eggsy, but that isn’t why I’m here.” He paused before continuing, his confident, posh tone turning a bit more quiet and unsure. “I wanted to thank you for your kindness. I wasn’t _meaning_ …I wasn’t _purposefully_ trying to garner your sympathy.”

They were quiet for an awkward moment and Harry pulled a fifty pound note from his breast pocket. “So. I simply wanted you to know that. And to pay you back.”

He tried to hand Eggsy the money, but Eggsy kept his arms folded across his milk-soaked apron. His temper was fraying rapidly. “I ain’t taking that. If you think I helped you for some kind of reward or for summat in return, I can tell you what you can do wif it, though.”

Harry lets his outstretched hand fall to his side and clenched his teeth, clearly wanting to argue but not wanting to get Eggsy’s back up any further.

“I also wanted to say,” he started, but paused. If Eggsy had thought his tone was unsure before, it was nothing compared to the hesitance now. “I also wanted to say that I very much enjoyed sharing a meal with you that evening. I was rather hoping that we could…do it again sometime.”

Eggsy was surprised, for sure. Surprised to see Harry again. Surprised that Harry wasn’t who he’d thought. Most of all surprised that such a fit and obviously posh bloke would look twice at him, let alone ask him out. Unless…

“Like, as a date? Or ‘cause I ain’t taking your money?”

Harry smiled, and Eggsy wondered what it was about those lines ‘round his eyes that was so sexy. That wasn’t normal, right? Most people don’t get turned on by wrinkles. Maybe he needed therapy.

“As a date, if that would be all right with you.”

Eggsy uncrossed his arms, finally, and shrugged in a way that he hoped was cool and casual.

“Yeah, alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again, MP  
> [](http://statcounter.com/shopify/)


End file.
